This invention relates to methods and apparatus for identifying people and in particular to methods and apparatus that involve implanting identifying indicia within at least one tooth of a subject.
Identification of the remains of people killed in both man-made and natural disasters has become increasingly scientific over time. Although direct identification of the remains by either a family member or close friend of the deceased is the usual method for identifying deceased individuals, this can be impossible in the case of disasters which are traumatic and destructive in nature. If personal identification is not possible, fingerprints can sometimes be used. Fingerprints, however, suffer from two inherent problems: (1) a fairly small percentage of the overall population have their fingerprints on file; and (2) in the case of a cataclysmic accident, fingerprints may not be available due to the trauma that the body has undergone.
Dental records are often used in disaster cases with a high degree of accuracy. However, there must be some idea as to who the individual might be in order to obtain the dental records. Thus, the use of dental records typically precludes a quick identification of the body. This leaves the friends and family members of the deceased without answers for a long period of time. For example, airline accidents in which a large number of people are killed often have a very traumatic collision and/or a fire burning at high temperatures.
Moreover, with the increasing problem of missing children in today's society, there is a need to identify children, especially after the child has been missing for many years. Photographic evidence in identifying children after several years is of limited efficacy due to the changing nature of a child's appearance as they mature. Although fingerprints are ideal for this use, since they do not change with the passage of time, there has been a general resistance to the fingerprinting of children and also as to where those fingerprint records should be kept.
Therefore what is needed is an apparatus for the identification of a person which does not change or decay with age, which is resistant to severe trauma, to high temperatures, and is resistant to corrosive environments and is easy to insert and remove and read with little discomfort or technology required.